I recently had the privilege of meeting with this humble but passionate man who gives freely of his time and skills to help the local community.
Ray Steel is one of those foreigners who does more for this country than many of us local South Africans. He’s also not annoyingly holier-than-though. The kind of guy you’d want at your next braai, he thinks about what he says, is passionate, has varied interests and a genuine smile.
I had coffee with Ray at Rioja near Kommetjie which happens to be over the road from Masiphumelele township, where Ray heads up the ‘open class’ community computer training at the library. When I arrived at Rioja I first noticed his biker helmet, then his guitar, then his smile over pages of sheet music (he’d just been at a guitar lesson).
After ordering coffee we got down to the interview:
Portfolio Travel Blog: What place in South Africa do you call home?
Ray Steel: Scarborough. I came to SA for a 1 month holiday some years back,stayed for 3(!), came back a year or 2 later and bought a plot of land in Scarbs - I built on that and it became my home. I live here for 6 months of the year, and back in the UK for the other 6 months.
PTB: Do you surf? (Ed – note: Scarborough is a bit of a surfing mecca near Cape Point)
RS: No – my brother’s a mad surfer but I’m more of a music man myself (gestures to his guitar)
PTB: Name your best local spot to have a great breakfast…
RS: We’re sitting in it!
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| Masi Library - photo: Ray Steel |
PTB: How long been involved with Masi Library.
RS: For the last 5 years. From the moment I arrived here I decided I wanted to do volunteer work of some sort, but for the first 3 years it didn’t materialize. Then I heard there was something going on in Masi and thought I might get involved in teaching children how to read. I come from an IT background; I actually gave up IT in 1999 – just before the madness of the Millennium. So I turned up at the Masi Library to volunteer and there “happened” to be a meeting of all the volunteers there. I joined in and someone asked if anyone present had any experience with IT because computers were being installed at that time by SmartCape. They wanted someone to teach - I had vowed that I wasn’t going to have anything to do with computers ever again. But I couldn’t really keep quiet. So I put my hand up and that’s how I became the default computer teacher. I started working with these SmartCape computers for the first year, having never taught before and totally improvising. And I found that I was quite good at seeing where people were struggling - seeing it from their angle and then getting them to understand – I think I have a natural ability in that area, not to blow my own trumpet!
And then another load of computers were installed, funded by MasiCorp (John and Carol Thompson) who had also funded the building of the library in Masi (among other projects in the township) with financial support from the States.
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Nosindiso (one of the learners) booking someone in to use the computer
Photo: Ray Steel
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The next time I returned from my 6 months in the UK there was this small network of computers, with a dedicated ADSL line for Masi Library.
Five years on that network has doubled in size and I’ve moved from having 3 or 4 students to where we have 10 computers, sometimes with up to 3 people at each computer.
PTB: How often do you teach?
RS: Three mornings a week – Monday, Wednesday and Saturday for 2 and a half hours at a time – tends to be more like 3 hours usually!
PTB: So obviously there is a need for those skills in the community and a desire to learn.
RS: Absolutely. I teach young adults - mostly people who have left school, with or without Matric, who just want to participate in the digital age. They attend up to 3 x 2.5 hours non stop lessons per week, so that spells ‘keen’!
PTB: What kind of skills do you pass on to the learners?
RS: Mainly how to use the Word Processor effectively, including How to search and copy information from the Internet - All I am passing on are the skills I have myself so I focus on what I do on my own computer at home. I don’t try to go up obscure avenues or make things complicated.
PTB: Explain the teaching methods you’ve developed over the years.
RS: It’s been a very organic thing. I haven’t come from a teaching background, so I’ve been feeling my way in the dark and what I discovered works best is to lay out small practical exercises, first demonstrating with a pc & overhead projector then go around to each individual and help them where they are struggling. I try to use subject matter that might be of use or interest. So they can see a reason for learning, a practical application. Otherwise they don’t see the value in learning to simply open files and write lists of irrelevant information.
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Peer Education: Xolani, a leaner, helps Ray with the classes these days.
Photo: Ray Steel
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PTB: What kind of projects have you found work well?
RS: We do mock fashion shows and music festivals where they need to work out programmes, design flyers and posters, that sort of thing. Then we’ve created tourism brochures for example one on the Cape Peninsula. They learn a lot more than basic IT skills, it’s educational too. They learned about the flora and fauna of the region, they learn event planning skills and things like sending letters to newspaper and magazine editors, marketing themselves, that kind of thing. We’ve also covered social topics such as the xenophobic uprising in recent times.
We do projects over several weeks rather than something new every single lesson. So they learn to research online, find pictures, write their own information, draw up graphs on Excel, all the while they are learning valuable computer skills.
We make the end product look as professional as possible – they do actually look like the sort of thing you would pick up at a tourism info desk. They can use these skills in the workplace – I say to them it’s a bit like desktop publishing and most of my neighbours in Scarborough wouldn’t be able to pull something like this together – they do everything - headers and footers, copy pictures, wrap text around the pictures. So yeah, they end up learning all the skills I know – it’s not only skills they learn but also facts so it’s a little bit educational in a broader sense as well.
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Students cluster around the computers
photo: Ray Steel
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PTB: It’s fun and with that sort of roll play they can also start imagining who they can be, a different life for themselves and feeling what it would be like to be involved in real fashion, music and tourism ventures. I guess it gives them hope and dreams.
RS: I think it lets them look at things outside of the box – Masi can be insular...
PTB: I suppose most people there are living hand to mouth so thinking beyond the next meal must be a very different experience for some of them.
RS: Yes they use their imagination. These projects work on so many levels. I couldn’t sit and tell them ‘this is how to open a document” and “this is an icon” – I couldn’t teach that way. If I create a project that interests me and them, I’m engaged, they’re engaged and it works. Each session starts with a brief lesson in the absolute basics, what a mouse is, that kind of thing, and then we immediately start work on the project we’re working on so they are often thrown in the deep end. But I find it’s the best way – people in Masi are incredibly patient and very keen to learn and pass along to others.
PTB: They have a kind of open source mentality literally – to share information and help each other rather than hold everything to themselves…
RS: Exactly – a kind of peer education. So people are learning from one another and end up teaching one another. I see someone turning up at a first lesson, incredibly nervous and shy and scared to touch the computer, and within a few lessons they’re up to speed with the others. And THEN the most beautiful thing to me is when a new comer arrives and that person leans over and shows the newcomer how to do something and that’s when I think “Success!”
PTB: Thanks for sharing with our readers about the project at Masi library and for inspiring more people to become involved in working in the community.
Footnote: YOU can volunteer at Masi Library
Ray will be leaving for his annual 6 months back in the UK shortly (April 2010) and he needs someone willing and able to take over the Wednesday slot, teaching IT at Masi Library (he has the other slots covered).
Ray says:
"Anyone with a thorough knowledge of Microsoft Word and good working knowledge of the Internet and Excel would be rewarded with exceptional job satisfaction, bags of gratitude and hopefully some good Karma too (but no money!). As I told you, we teach by working together with students on interesting practical and creative projects. I can be contacted in April on 021 780 1387 or else Sue Alexander is on 021 784 2030 during work hours."
